Great Throughts Treasury

"At birth, the child leaves a person ? his mother?s womb ? and this makes him independent of her bodily functions. The baby is next endowed with an urge, or need, to face the out world and to absorb it. We might say that he is born with ?the psychology of world conquest.? By absorbing what he finds about him, he forms his own personality."

"At one year of age the child says his first intentional word? his babbling has a purpose, and this intention is a proof of conscious intelligence? He becomes ever more aware that language refers to his surroundings, and his wish to master it consciously becomes also greater? Subconsciously and unaided, he strains himself to learn, and this effort makes his success all the more astonishing."

"At this stage the completion of an entire cycle will exercise an influence more and more far-reaching on the personality of the child. Not only is he spurred on to a work of intimate concentration immediately after his culminating effort, he preserves a permanent attitude of thought, of internal equilibrium of sustained interest in his environment. He becomes a personality who has reached a higher degree of evolution. This is the period when the child begins to be master of himself and enters upon that characteristic phenomenon I have called the phenomenon of obedience. He can obey, that is, he can control his actions, and therefore can direct them in accordance with the desires of another person. He can break off a piece of work when interrupted, without becoming disorderly or showing symptoms of fatigue. Moreover, work has become his habitual attitude, and the child can no longer bear to be idle."

"Before a child reaches the age of three, the highest form of work and the most enobling that engages him is that of arranging furniture and putting things in order, and it is also the one that calls for the greatest activity."

"Before such attention and concentration have been attained, the teacher must learn to control herself so that the child's spirit shall be free to expand and show its powers; the essence of her duty is not to interrupt the child in his efforts. This is a moment in which the delicacy of the teacher's moral sensitiveness, acquired during her training, comes into play. She must learn that it is not easy to help, nor even, perhaps, to stand still and watch. Even when helping and serving the children, she must not cease to observe them, because the birth of concentration in a child is as delicate a phenomenon as the bursting of a bud into bloom. But she will not be watching with the aim of making her presence felt, or of helping the weaker ones by her own strength. She observes in order to recognize the child who has attained the power to concentrate and to admire the glorious rebirth of his spirit."

"Bring the child to the consciousness of his own dignity and he will feel free."

"But an adult if he is to provide proper guidance must always be calm and act slowly so that the child who is watching him can clearly see his actions in all their particulars."

"But if for the physical life it is necessary to have the child exposed to the vivifying forces of nature, it is also necessary for his psychical life to place the soul of the child in contact with creation."

"But in our specially prepared environments we see them all at once fix themselves upon some task, and then their excited fantasies and their restless movements disappear altogether; a calm, serene child, attached to reality, begins to work out his elevation through work. Normalization has been achieved."

"But the child does not want to get anywhere; he just want to walk, and to help him truly the adult must follow the child, and not expect him to keep up. The need for following the child is clearly demonstrated here, but indeed it is."

"But the child too is a worker and a producer. If he cannot take part in the adult's work, he has his own, a great, important, difficult work indeed - the work of producing man? The child's work belongs to another order and has a wholly different force from the work of the adult. Indeed one might say that the one is opposed to the other. The child?s work is done unconsciously, in abandonment to a mysterious spiritual energy, actively engaged in creation. It is indeed a creative work; it is perhaps the very spectacle of the creation of man, as symbolically outlined in the Bible."

"But when through exceptional circumstances work is the result of an inner, instinctive impulse, then even in the adult it assumes a wholly different character. Such work is fascinating, irresistible, and it raises man above deviations and inner conflicts. Such is the work of the inventor or discoverer, the heroic efforts of the explorer, or the compositions of the artist, that is to say, the work of men gifted with such an extraordinary power as to enable them to rediscover the instinct of their species in the patterns of their own individuality. This instinct is then a fountain that bursts through the hard outer crust and rises, through a profound urge, to fall, as refreshing rain, on arid humanity. It is through this urge that the true progress of civilization takes place."

"But, above all it is the education of adolescents that is important, because adolescence is the time when the child enters on the state of manhood and becomes a member of society."

"Children become like the things they love."

"Children decide on their actions under the prompting of natural laws. If someone usurps the function of this guide the child is prevented from developing either his will or his concentration."

"Choice and execution are the prerogatives and conquests of a liberated soul."

"Confidences would come more easily in the years they are longed for if they were invited in the years when living was exciting and every act a great adventure."

"Derive great personal benefit from being initiated in economic independence. For this would result in a valorization of his personality, in making him feel himself capable of succeeding in life by his own efforts and on his own merits, and at the same time it would put him in direct contact with the supreme reality of social life . We speak therefore of letting him earn money by his own work."

"Development is a series of rebirths."

"Directing our action toward mankind means, first and foremost, doing so with regard to the child. The child, that ?forgotten citizen?, must be appreciated in accordance with his true value. His rights as a human being who shapes all of mankind must become sacred, and the secret laws of his normal psychic development must light the way for civilization."

"Discipline must come through liberty? We do not consider an individual disciplined only when he has been rendered as artificially silent as a mute and as immovable as a paralytic. He is an individual annihilated, not disciplined."

"Do not fear to destroy evil. It is only the good that we must fear to destroy. As we must call a child by its name before it can answer, so it is necessary to call vigorously to awaken the soul."

"Do not tell them how to do it. Show them how to do it and do not say a word. If you tell them, they will watch your lips move. If you show them, they will want to do it themselves."

"Do we believe and constantly insist that cooperation among the peoples of the world is necessary in order to bring about peace? If so, what is needed first of all is collaboration with children... All our efforts will come to nothing until we remedy the great injustice done the child, and remedy it by cooperating with him. If we are among the men of good will who yearn for peace, we must lay the foundation for peace ourselves, by working for the social world of the child."

"Does Nature make a difference between work and play or occupation and rest? Watch the unending activity of the flowing stream or the growing tree. See the breakers of the ocean, the unceasing movements of the earth, the planets, the sun and the stars. All creation is life, movement, work. What about our hearts, our lungs, our bloodstream which work continuously from birth till death? Have they asked for some rest? Not even during sleep are they inactive. What about our mind which works without intermission while we are awake or asleep?"

"During this early period, education must be understood as a help to the unfolding of the child's inborn psychic powers."

"During this period the personality undergoes great changes. We have only to compare the newborn babe with the six year old to see this."

"Education between the ages of six and twelve is not a direct continuation of that which has gone before, although it is built upon that foundation."

"Education between the ages of six to twelve is not a direct continuation of that which has gone before, though it is built upon that basis. Psychologically there is a decided change in personality, and we recognize that nature has made this a period for the acquisition of culture, just as the former was for the absorption of the environment."

"Education demands, then, only this: the utilization of the inner powers of the child for his own instruction."

"Education is not something which a teacher does, but it is a natural process which develops spontaneously in human beings. The first thing a child?s education demands is the provision of an environment in which he can develop the powers given him by nature."

"Education should not limit itself to seeking new methods for a mostly arid transmission of knowledge: its aim must be to give the necessary aid to human development. This world, marvelous in its power, needs a new man. It is therefore the life of man and his values that must be considered. If the formation of man becomes the basis of education, then the coordination of all schools from infancy to maturity, from nursery to university, arises as a first necessity: for man is a unity, an individuality that passes through interdependent phases of development. Each preceding phase prepares the one that follows, forms its base, nurtures the energies that urge towards the succeeding period of life."

"Education should therefore include the two forms of work, manual and intellectual, for the same person, and thus make it understood by practical experience that these two kinds complete each other and are equally essential to a civilized existence."

"Education starts a birth."

"Education, therefore, of little ones is important, especially from three to six years of age, because this is the embryonic period for the formation of character and of society, (just as the period from birth to three is that for forming the mind, and the prenatal period that for forming the body."

"Establishing lasting peace is the work of education; all politics can do is keep us out of war."

"Every complex action comprises a series of distinct movements; one act follows the other. The analysis of movements consists in trying to recognize and to carry out exactly these separate and distinct acts... Dressing and undressing oneself, for example, are highly complex acts which we adults, except on special occasions, carry out rather imperfectly."

"Except when he has regressive tendencies, the child?s nature is to aim directly and energetically at functional independence."

"Experience is a key for the intensification of instruction given inside the school."

"Follow the child, but follow the child as his leader."

"Free choice is one of the highest of all the mental processes."

"Free the child's potential, and you will transform him into the world."

"Freedom without organization is useless. The organization of the work, therefore, is the cornerstone of this new structure. But even that organization would be in vain without the liberty to make use of it."

"Freedom without organization of work would be useless. The child left free without means of work would go to waste, just as a new-born baby, if left free without nourishment, would die of starvation. The organization of the work, therefore, is the cornerstone of this new structure of goodness [in education], but even that organization would be in vain without the liberty to make use of it."

"From the very beginning of my work with deficient children (1898 to 1900) I felt that the methods which I used had in them nothing peculiarly limited to the instruction of idiots. I believed that they contained educational principles more rational than those in use, so much more so, indeed, that through their means an inferior mentality would be able to grow and develop. This feeling, so deep as to be in the nature of an intuition, became my controlling idea after I had left the school for deficients, and, little by little, I became convinced that similar methods applied to normal children would develop or set free their personality in a marvelous and surprising way."

"Growth and psychic development are therefore guided by: the absorbent mind, the nebulae and the sensitive periods, with their respective mechanisms. It is these that are hereditary and characteristic of the human species. But the promise they hold can only be fulfilled through the experience of free activity conducted in the environment."

"Growth is not merely a harmonious increase in size, but a transformation."

"Happiness is not the whole aim of education. A man must be independent in his powers and character; able to work and assert his mastery over all that depends on him."

"He does it with his hands, by experience, first in play and then through work. The hands are the instruments of man's intelligence."

"He must use, according to time and circumstances, the many things which he has learned perfectly. But it is he who makes the decision. How he is to use what he has learned is a task for his own conscience, an exercise of his own responsibility. He is thus freed from the greatest of all dangers, that of making an adult responsible for his actions, of condemning his own conscience to a kind of idle slumber."